The invention relates to initiating corrective action after the occurrence of a program error.
Many computer programs have errors, or "bugs," that cause execution of the program to terminate prematurely, or "crash." When a crash occurs, the computer may display (on a monitor) a memory location that informs a user of the computer where the crash occurred, and the computer might display information (the contents of registers of a microprocessor of the computer, for example) that informs the user about a state of the computer when the crash occurred.
After the occurrence of an error, the user might use the computer to contact another computer (a server computer coupled to the Internet, for example) that stores a database maintained by a provider of the program. The database may include revision program code, or a "patch," for revising the program to prevent reoccurrence of the error. In this manner, after a crash occurs, the user might download and install the revision program code to revise the program.
The database might include numerous files of revision program code for many different types of encountered errors. In order for the computer storing the database to identify the appropriate revision code, the user might copy all of information displayed by the computer after the crash and provide this information to the computer storing the database to download the appropriate code. If the code is not present in the database, the user might terminate the connection between the computers without informing the computer storing the database about the encountered error.
Thus, there is a continuing need for an arrangement that improves the efficiency and error reporting capability of such a system.